During World War 2, one B-17 Bomber cost a little over $200,000 to produce. Thatâs about $3,4 million in todayâs economy. And since the US Army requested thousands of these planes, they wanted to take every measure when securing the Boeing factory that produced them. And by âevery measureâ I mean hiring Hollywood set designers to build a fake neighborhood atop it and getting actors to inhabit the area.
Protecting it from potential air strikes, the âneighborhoodâ was constructed in 1944 and removed a year after the war. John Stewart Detlie was the Hollywood set designer who helped to hide the Boeing Plant No. 2. Using the same techniques as in the movies, fake streets, sidewalks, trees, fences, cars, and houses were set in place to fool the would-be attackers.
Underneath it, 30,000 men and women were constructing about 300 bombers per month to support the fight against Nazis. Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses dropped over 640,000 tons of bombs over Germany alone during the conflict, and of the 12,731 aircraft built, about fifty remain in complete form. (Source)
Could immortality really be achieved? If so, how? One man may know the answer.
Saint Germain is thought to have been born in the late 1600s (there are no official records), but some think he may have even been around during the same time as Jesus Christ.
There have been many accounts of his existence throughout history. He was acquainted with several well known historical figures including: Voltaire, Madame de Pompadour, Casanova, Catherine the Great, King Louis XV, and Anton Mesmer.Â
Saint Germain was known to be very talented in the art and pseudo-science known as alchemy. Allegedly he discovered how to create a Philosopherâs Stone (Harry Potter fan know whatâs up). A Philosopherâs Stone can turn any metal into silver or gold, and could also grant the creator immortality. He claimed to be able to fuse diamonds together and to make pearls grow to enormous sizes.
Most recently, there was a claim in the 1970s by a Parisian man named Richard Chanfray that he was the famous count. Chanfray committed suicide in 1983. Or did he fake his death to throw us off?
Some hikers also met a mysterious man who had a striking resemblance to Saint Germain on a mountain in California. The man told them stories about Nero and Dante, as if he had known them.
Even if this isnât true why would so many men would want to impersonate one man who is virtually unknown to history?
In 1587, Raleigh dispatched a new group of 115 colonists to establish a colony on Chesapeake Bay. They were led by John White, an artist and friend of Raleigh who had accompanied the previous expeditions to Roanoke. Shortly thereafter, colonist George Howe was killed by a native while searching alone for crabs in Albemarle Sound. Fearing for their lives, the colonists persuaded Governor White to return to England to explain the colonyâs desperate situation and ask for help. White sailed for England in late 1587, although crossing the Atlantic at that time of year was a considerable risk. Because of the continuing war with Spain, White was unable to mount another resupply attempt for an additional three years. He finally gained passage on a privateering expedition that agreed to stop off at Roanoke on the way back from the Caribbean. White landed on August 18, 1590, but found the settlement deserted. The only clue was the word âCROATOANâ carved into a post of the fence around the village. All the houses and fortifications had been dismantled, which meant that their departure had not been hurried. Before he had left the colony, White instructed them that, if anything happened to them, they should carve a Maltese cross on a tree nearby, indicating that their absence had been forced. There was no cross, and White took this to mean that they had moved to Croatoan Island (now known as Hatteras Island), but he was unable to conduct a search. The end of the 1587 colony is unrecorded, leading to the colony being referred to as the âLost colonyâ, with multiple hypotheses existing as to the fate of the colonists. X
I first heard about this while watching Destination America’s, ‘Terror in the Woods’. One of the stories was about a woman’s husband who claimed to have encountered a werewolf and she commented how maybe that was what could have happened to the Lost Colony. Interested, I just had to read about this incident.
I just love when my fascination with the paranormal makes me learn about real historical events.
Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo Da Vinci, most likely at the behest of the Borgias, once conspired to steal a river.
Thatâs right folks. They planned to change the course of the Arno River so that they could steal it from Pisa and make Florence accessible by sea.Â
Please take a moment to imagine that.
Please.Â
âSo we just divert the -â
âDonât worry they wonât notice a thingâ
100% better than National Treasure.
This should be a wacky bromance heist film. We need more wacky historical heist films.
It gets better. I just had to go check on the veracity of this and discovered MORE.
Their plan failed, at which point Machiavelli decided to quietly fade out of politicsâŠand went on to write The Prince, one of the most (in)famous pieces of Western literature.
Da Vinci, meanwhile, never forgot the river that got away. In fact, he made it the background of one of his most famous paintingsâhell, one of the most famous paintings, period.
The loops of metal over the top, the globe on top, all of these things signify an imperial crown. The symbolic meaning is that the wearer recognized no authority beyond them (save God) – more on this in a second.Â
By contrast, a merely royal crown is an open circlet or diadem, comme ca:Â
Not to say that royal crowns – like this one, the famed Iron Crown of Lombardy used by Charlesmagne and Napoleon – couldnât be fancy or important, but they didnât have the symbolism of imperial rule.Â
Why is this symbolism relevant? Well, when England split from the Catholic Church under Henry VIII, part of the legal justification that Thomas Cromwell put together for the Act in Restraint of Appeals was that:
âWhere by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same.â
Now, keep in mind that some of these âdivers sundry old authentic historiesâ counted Brutus of Troy and King Arthur as examples of British imperial dignity, but Cromwell could point to Henry IV and Henry V, who both were crowned with an imperial crown (probably as an attempt to shore up their authority given the whole business with Richard II), as proof that England had previously claimed independence from the Pope in Rome.Â
đ„ There is beauty in destructionđ„ 